One thing I know about puppy raising is the importance of a routine. So I’m making an effort to be lot more regimented while I’m here and it’s paying off with a puppy who is increasingly easy to mind, less stress even when I have a large workload (as I do this weekend), and being able to truly enjoy the experience. Puppy is very affectionate and always up for a cuddle, so I must be doing something right.

Work has been funny. I had a very slow week and I spent quite some time looking and applying for one-off contracts. And then, boom, all my clients apparently came back to life and I have a very full roster through at least Monday. With one of the clients, I’m only allowed to sign out two files at a time. They’ve been really slow since mid-December, so I take what I can get from them and signed out two very small ones that came up. Then, of course, they got a bunch of longer files in. You can’t abandon files just to take others (“cherry picking”) so I was stuck with what I had, disappointing as it was. But then, as we got closer to the end of the work day in California, there were still tons of files in the queue, so I emailed my contact to ask if I could have more work even though I had my quota. Next thing I knew, he’d assigned me as much as I wanted! I’ll have been with this client a year by the time I get settled in Mexico in May, so between that and consistently getting good reviews, I should be in a position to negotiate a bigger allotment.

With my out of the house time being so limited, I continue to like Tesco delivery, even if I have to pay for it now. I had shopping delivered only on Monday and it felt ridiculous to put together another shop today, but I was out of meat and veg. It made more sense to do another order than to take a couple of hours to run to the shops today. I definitely should have just done a bigger shop the first time around since I now have to pay for delivery, but I’m still not very good at gauging how much I should be buying to last me the time of my stay. It ends up being more advantageous to plan about 10 days out. I still have tons left from that first shop, though, but I seriously underestimated how fast some things, like the almond milk (which comes in smaller containers here) would last. Tesco delivery costs depend on the day and time. I would have had to wait till 10PM Tuesday to get a £2 delivery slot. Before then, the cheapest slot was £3.50 on Monday. I was able to get a slot tonight for £4, so I just went for that. The shopping will come between eight and nine, which fits into Puppy’s and my evening routine, but just barely.

Have I mentioned just how cute she is? You should see (and feel!) those floppy ears of hers. 🙂

I can’t believe I’ll be back in Canada this time next month (and hopefully over the jet lag). I really need to start working on the Montreal to Haven to Mexico thing that’s coming up… 🙂